Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Jonathan Davenport, as played by long time veteran John Heard, is an older wealthy guy coming home from some soirée with his completely hot trophy wife Dana (Erin Cardillo). Jonathan has observed that the maid they fired the other day took her stuff along with the telephone and left a broken open window. Personally, being the paranoid type, if I come home to a broken open window I’m calling the cops and spending the night in a hotel which is probably why what is about to happen to the Davenport’s would more than likely never happen to me in director Ryan Barton Grimley’s little psychological thriller ‘The Truth’

While trying to catch some z’s Jonathan hears a noise, goes downstairs to check it out and the next thing you know he’s KTFO’d, tied and duct taped to chair with his hot wife tied down right next to him. Why is this terrible thing happening? This introduces us to the Davenports’ tormentor Gabriel (Brandon Sexton III) who is clearly completely out of his mind waving around a loaded gun, pistol whipping people, verbally abusing people and just being an all around mean dude.

What is unclear is what exactly Gabriel wants. He informs the couple that he will be asking a couple of questions with all he wants in return from these questions is the truth. Not telling the truth will result in consequences and repercussions. The questions are simple enough ranging from ‘Is there a safe in the house’ to ‘How much money do you have’, but they do get a little more complex as time goes on and thus the beatings drag on. Some of these more complex questions could be attributed to the fact that we flashback every once in a while to a young boy, who are assume is a young Gabriel, having conversations with his mother who we see is having an affair. This affair his whore of a mother is engaged in isn’t making young Gabriel very happy and will have a lasting effect on the young man’s life, but what does that have to do with Jonathan and his hot wife?

As it so turns out this just isn’t some random home invasion. Gabriel seems to know an awful lot about Jonathan and Dana and to Jonathan’s great dismay it looks like his hot wife may knows this loon as well. Or not. Who knows? One thing we do know is that somebody isn’t telling the truth. Or everybody. Who knows?

While it’s clear that Barton-Grimley’s ‘The Truth’ is a lower budgeted affair, judging from the fact that this movie takes place in largely one location and observing that this one location is at best sparsely furnished, and also noting that this is a dialog driven film with words generally being the least expensive thing in any movie, and also featuring a cast of relative unknowns outside of John Heard and the fat Baldwin… ‘The Truth’ doesn’t feel like a low budget thriller. It has a nice slick look to it, Barton-Grimley knows how to direct, at least in these tight confines, and paces this movie with an action filmmakers sensibilities and the film is mighty well acted, which is critical considering this is a movie largely consisting of three people in a room talking each other.

While watching the movie and as things were beginning to unfold I was a little concerned because the fact that all three of these characters were linked in some kind of way seemed to be heading toward the ‘incredible coincidence’ avenue, but to the story tellers benefit I couldn’t imagine the tale being that was being spun working out any better than it did, keeping us in the dark in the beginning, confusing us in the middle and giving some clarity in the end.

The one thing I didn’t really care for were the flashback scenes which served the purpose of giving us some of the history in what was going on. I’m thinking that these scenes did add some padding to a movie that was relatively brief in addition to giving us another named actor to put on a box cover in Daniel Baldwin, but I personally would’ve preferred the story to stay with the actors we were dealing with already since they were doing a such a fine job of propelling this thing along and maybe the screenwriters could’ve woven in the back story into what we were already seeing with Heard, Sexton and Cardillo. The sepia toned flashbacks looked nice but were kind of unnecessary and disrupted the flow.

All in all the ‘The Truth’ was lean, tight, and enjoyable thriller highlighted by some fine writing and even better performances. Pushes the levels of believability a bit perhaps, but still a fine showing.